It wasn’t making progress. It rolled to a certain point in the sherbet-colored light, sagged, smoked, and dropped away. And smoked. And dropped.
“It can’t get any farther?” Urson asked.
“It doesn’t look it,” said Geo.
A skeleton stood, flesh running in the orange light. It tottered, steaming, and fell with a sucking noise into hundreds of feet of shadow. Geo was holding tightly to the girder in front of him.
The orange light fell cleanly over his hand, wrist, shadow starting at his elbow.
What happened made him squeeze until sweat came: the gargantuan mass, which had only extended tentacles till now, pulsed to the jagged edge and flung itself on the metal beams. It careened toward them. They jerked back.
Then it stopped.
It boiled, it burned, it writhed. And it sank, smoking, through the naked girder work. It tried to crawl back. Human figures leaped toward the road edge, missed, and plummeted like smoking bullets. It hurled a great pseudopod back toward the safety of the road; it fell short, flopped downward, and the whole mass shook. It slipped free of the beams, tentacles sliding across steel, whipping into air. Then it dropped, breaking into a dozen pieces before they lost sight of it.
Geo released the girder. “My arm hurts,” he said.
They climbed back to the road. “What happened?” asked Iimmi.
“Whatever it was, I’m glad it did,” said Urson.
Something clattered before them in the darkness.
“What was that?” asked Urson, stopping.
“My foot hit something,” Geo said.
“What was it?” asked Urson.
“Never mind,” said Geo. “Come on.”
Fifteen minutes brought them to the stairway to the lower highway. Iimmi’s memory proved good, and for an hour they went quickly, Iimmi making no hesitation at turnings.
“God,” Geo said, rubbing his forearm. “I must have pulled hell out of my arm back there. It hurts like the devil.”
Urson looked at his hands and rubbed them together.
“My hands feel sort of funny,” Iimmi said. “Like they’ve been windburned.”
“Windburned, nothing,” said Geo. “This hurts.”
Twenty minutes later, Iimmi said, “Well, this should be about it.”
“Hey,” said Urson. “There’s Snake!” They ran forward as the boy jumped off the rail. Snake grabbed their shoulders and grinned. Then he began to tug them forward.
“Lucky little so-and-so,” said Urson. “I wish you’d been with us.”
“He probably was in spirit, if not in body.” Geo laughed.
Snake nodded.
“What are you pulling for?” Urson asked. “Say, if you’re going to get migraines at times like that, you’d better teach us what to do with those beads there.” He pointed to the jewel at Iimmi’s and Geo’s necks.
But Snake just tugged them on.
“He wants us to hurry,” Geo said. “We better get going.”
The fallen floor had made descent through New Edison impossible. But the roadway still continued down, so they followed it along. Twice it cracked widely and they had to clamber along the rail. All the streetlights were out here, but they could see the river, struck with moonlight, through the buildings. Finally the road tore completely away, and four feet below them, over the twisted rail, was the mouth of the street that led to the waterfront. Snake, Iimmi, and then Urson vaulted over. Urson shook his hands painfully when he landed.
“Give me a hand, will you?” Geo asked. “My arm is really shot.” Urson helped his friend over.
And almost as though it had been in wait, thick liquid gurgled behind them. A wounded thing, it emerged from behind the broken highway, bulging up into the light, which shone on the wrinkles in its shriveled membrane.
“Run it!” bawled Urson. They took off down the street. In the moonlight, the ruined piers spread along the waterfront to either side.
They saw it bloat the entrance of the street, fill it, then pour across the broken flags, slipping across the rubble of the smashed buildings.
On the edge of the wharf they looked back. Now the thing wavered, spreading tentacles left and right. From one of these a man formed. Standing at the head of the flowing mess, he raised a hand and beckoned to them in the moonlight.
Geo hit water and was aware of two things immediately as the hands caught him. First, the thong was yanked from around his neck. Second, pain seared his arm as if the nerves and ligaments were suddenly laced by white-hot strands of steel. Every vein and capillary had become part of a web of fire.
It was a long time before consciousness. Once he was lifted and he opened his mouth, expecting water. But there was only cool air. And when he opened his eyes, the white moon was moving fast above him toward the dark shapes of leaves, then was gone behind them. Was he being carried? And his arm…There was more drowsy half consciousness, and once a great deal of pain. When he opened his mouth to scream, however, darkness flowed in, swathed his tongue, and he swallowed the darkness down into his body and into his head, and called it sleep —
— a spool of copper wire unrolled over the black tile. Scoop it up quick. Damn, let me get out of here. Run past the black columns, glimpsing the cavernous room and the black statue at the other end, huge, rising into shadows. Men in dark robes walking around. Just don’t feel up to praying this afternoon. I am before the door; above it, a black disk with three white eyes on it. Through the door, now up the black stone steps. Wonder if anyone will be up there. Just my luck I’ll find the Old Man himself. Another door with a black circle above it. Push it open slowly, cool on my hands. A man is standing inside, looking into a large screen. Figures moving on it. Can’t make them out; he’s in the way. Oh, there’s another one. Jeepers…
I don’t know whether to call it success or failure, one says.
The jewels are…safe or lost?
What do you call it? the first one asks. I don’t know anymore. He sighs. I don’t think I’ve taken my eyes off this thing for more than two hours since they got to the beach. Every mile they’ve come has made my blood run colder.
What do we report to Hama Incarnate?
It would be silly to say anything now. We don’t know.
Well, says the other, at least we can do something with the City of New Hope, since they got rid of that superamoeba.
Are you sure they really got it?
After the burning it received over that naked atom pile? It was all it could do to get to the waterfront. It’s just about fried up and blown away already.
And how safe would you call them? the other asks.
Right now? I wouldn’t call them anything.
Something glitters on the table by the door. Yes, there it is. In the pile of junked equipment is a U-shaped scrap of metal. Just what I need. Hot damn, adhesive tape too! Quick, there, before they see. Fine. Now, let the door close, reeeeeal slow. Oops. It clicked. Now come on; look innocent, in case they come out. I hope the Old Man isn’t watching. Guess they’re not coming. And down the stairs again, the black stone walls moving past. Out another door into the garden: dark flowers, purple, deep red, some with blue in them, and big stone urns. Oh, priests coming down the path. Oops again, there’s Dunderhead. He’ll want me inside praying. Duck down behind that urn. Here we go. What’ll I do if he catches me? Really, sir, I have nothing under my choir robe. Peek out.